RURAL FRANCE, 1848-1914

§41.

When

Leopold Delisle wrote, in 1852, of

how

^little French agriculture had changed since the" thirteenth century, France had several railways but

n

o railway system. In the

•'n

^tlen

yearsthe railwaysgrewintoasystem andthe telegraph came. Frenchagriculturedidnot forthwithcease tobein

many

>^ays medieval^. Ithasmedievalfeatures tothisday^.(Seepost,_§49.)

But forces were set free vastly

more

powerful than had ever played

upon

^{it, forces} capable of doingin decades

what

under

allpreviousconditions might havetaken centuries. Withinten years of Delisle's pronouncement, Leonce de Lavergne wrote his Economierurale de la France, a book which

was

used inan

earlier chapter to illustrate the relative immobility of French agriculture

down

to the fifties^. But all through the

book

the whistle of the locomotive can be heard. Lavergne writes, it

may

be, of Berriwhere things have changedhardly at all since Perette went to market with her milk on her head in cotillon simple etsouliersplats, and where the bonhommes live on inthe old way. Yet now, he tellsus, since the railhas come, things begin to

move

and they will

move

faster soon.

So

it is of whatever district he writes; and although he praises almost extravagantly

what

the roads have done, it is clear that he expectsfar

more

fromtherail.

The

grain-carryingoceantramp andthe cold-storagesteamerhedoes notforesee.

' Fifty years later, a French writer selected the years about -xi86o as the turning point in

modern

French agrarian history.

"Already they

knew

something offoreign competition, of the useofmachines, ofrisingcosts of production. But

what

to-day seemsobviouswasthenatmostdescriedbyfar-sighted observers.

Agriculture was still, in spiteofundoubtedtechnical improve- ments, intensely traditional,

marked by

the predominance of manual

work

and by a resigned submission to the...caprice of

' First edition, i860: "to-day"forLavergneis 1857-9.

CH.vm] TURNING POINT IN RURAL HISTORY

159 nature^."

The

foreign competition, the use ofmachinery, and therising costs ofproduction

which M.

Auge-Laribepicked out ascharacteristicsof the latest age, are all intimately connected withthoseimprovementsinthe

means

oftransport,which

drew

land nearer to land,

drew

the country nearer to the constantly developing engineering and chemical industries of the towns,

and

called for greater expenditure ofcapital and ^effort by the cultivator,

who,

ifhe

was

ahirer of labour, had to bidagainst the employers ofthese

now

easily accessible towns.

During

the half century 1860-1910 France, alone

among

the greater western nations, retained her predominantlyrural character.

But

the rural side of her national life was losing ground.

The

economic and social forces tending to a

more

complete urbanisation were so strong, that not even France's inadequate coal supplies, wonderful ^climate, and landowning peasantry could prevent her following the

same

road as her neighbours. After 1850 the

movement was

relatively rapid.

It

was

pointedout,indiscussingFrenchindustries inanearlier chapter, that between 1801 and 1851 the percentage of the population of France dwelling in towns of

more

than 20,000 inhabitants only

grew from 675

^{to io-6.}

By

1891 the figure

had

risen to 2i-i;

by

191^{1 it}

was

26-0.

From

about 1875 the populationclassed as ruralbeganto decline absolutely,thetotal population growing slowly. In 1846, before the ^railways

had begun

^{to tell, the total population (including}Alsace-Lorraine)

was

35,400,000; the^ruralpopulation

was

26,750,000or 75-6per cent, of the whole.

By

1866 the percentage had fallen to 69-5..

The

course of eventsunder theThird Republic was^{as follows:}

1876 1886 1896 1906 1911

The

^{rural population in French statistics is} the population living in

communes whose

chef ^lieu contains ^less than 2000 inhabitants.

The

test is necessarily rough. In the south

1

M.

Aug6-Larib6,L'evolutiondelaFranceagricole, 1912;abooktowhich thischapterisverymuch^indebted.

Total population

i6o

TURNING POINT IN RURAL HISTORY

^[ch.

particularly, where the Mediterranean urban civilisation has.

persisted from ^{classical times,}

many

big villages or country townswellabovethe2000 level arepredominantlyagricultural.

Againstthis,however,

must

besetthe increase in rural^districts of non-agricultural people

—

^traders, lawyers, mechanics and transportworkers. So that inwhatever

way

thereckoning

was made

the result

would

not be far different. Moreover, ^if allowanceis

made

foranincrease ofnon-agriculturalpeoplein rural districts, it

must

notbe overlooked that

many

of them»

especially the mechanics, arethere just because agriculture is,

so to speak,lessruralthanitwas.Itiscomingintothemechanical and businesslifeofthe towns. It isbeingindustrialised. This industrialisationof agriculture,verypartialasitremainedright

down

to ₁9_14,is afeature of the

modern

agewhichwillrequire attention.

§ 42. Nothing has happened since the sixties of the nine- teenth centurytoaltermateriallytheframeworkofFrenchrural society.

The

landowning peasantry has not been bought out;

veryfarfromit.

The

slowgrowthof population, andits actual declineonthe land,have preventedanyconspicuousincrease in the subdivision of the holdings. It could in fact be said with almostabsolute truth that population has not

grown

in order that holdings might not be subdivided;

some

of the districts

where the fairly prosperous peasant

owner

or the comfortable farmer predominates being those in which the birthrate is lowest.

Such

are the

Garonne

valley.

Burgundy

and

Normandy.

On

the other hand, none of the later political vicissitudes of France have destroyed the class of large landowners as

it wasreconstituted early inthe nineteenthcentury. Properties have changed hands or have beencut up.

The

bourgeoisie has bought and the old noble and gentle families have sold, in France as everywhere else; but large landowning has not dis- appeared, thoughithas lost

some

ofitsimportance.

Inquiries

made

in 1908-9

showed

that it

was

generally stationaryor declining. In

some

departments it hardlyexisted.

In a very few it

showed

a slight increase. Occasionally a

new

form

of large arable estate had resulted

from

drainage enter- prises or recovery of sandy wastes in the south.

A

recent

vm] CONSTANT _{ELEMENTS IN RURAL LIFE}

_i6i

transference of large estates to business

men from

the towns

was

registered almost everywhere; also the

phenomenon,

so familiar in Britain, of large forests and

moors

kept under a single control for sporting reasons.

The

definitely agricultural large estate

was now

comparativelyrare, the large agricultural estate mainlycultivated

by

or forthe

owner

rarerstill. In short, the position of the large proprietor was economically weaker than it

had

been fifty years earlier; but no dramatic change

had

occurred.

He

still heldhis place in rural society.

One

ruralclass,ifit

may

fairlybecalled a class,hascertainly''

declined

—

^{thatof the} mitayers.

The

^declinesetin early in the nineteenth century. Already in Lavergne's day,mdtayage was.

unknown

in districts

where

it

had

been

common

before the Revolution.

The

ordinary farming lease was taking its place.- Since his day the process has continued. It cannot be traced statistically,

owing

tothedefectsoftheFrenchcensusandother returns;but^it

was

amatter of

common

observationthatmetayage, once

common

all over France, had

become by

the end of the nineteenth century the peculiarityofcertain provinces.

Agricultural returns of theyears1882and1892

—

^laterreturns

of the

same

typeare notavailable

—

^reveal the position towhich mdtayage

had

sunk,towardsthe end of thenineteenth century.

As

they do not

show

a decline in the decade,

on

the contrary a tiny increase,it

maybe ^assumed

^thatthe positionwasstabilised,

and

that in 1892 mitayage

was

holding its

own

as a form of tenure well suited to certain districts and types ofagriculture.

Butitsplace

was now

verydefinitelysubordinatetothatofeither cultivating proprietorship or ordinaryfarming^fora

money

rent.^

The

figures are as follows

:

1882 1892

Cultivatingproprietor... 2,151,000 2,199,000 Fanner ... ... 968,000 1,061,000 Metayer ... ... 342,000 344.°°°

General conclusions cannot be

drawn

with any confidence

from

theseisolatedstatistics;butthe reported growth ofnearly 10percent, infarmers,as

compared

withtheveryslightgrowth in proprietors, suggests that subdivision of holdings was pro- ceeding

on

hired land at a perceptible ^rate. This may,

an4

i62

CONSTANT ELEMENTS ^IN RURAL LIFE

^[ch.

probably does, only reflect the growth of market gardening, flowergardening, and so on, which have

come

to play solarge a part in

modern

Frenchagriculture.

Most

^ofthe landso used

is rented, especially about Paris.

As

a good living can be got from a very small holding

on

this system, the whole group of figures

must

not betakenasin any

way

suggestinga deteriora- tion in the status or comfort of the average working owner, farmer,ormetayer.

These same

statistics, isolated though theyare, help to give a concrete notion of the position and importance of the true Jabouring class in French agriculture. In discussing the early nineteenth century, it was pointed out that old France did not contain a regular class of landless labourers, and that the

v^Revolution did nothing to produce such a class. Sons of peasants and peasants

whose

land, whether

owned

or held

by

metayage, was insufficient for their needs,

went

out to work;

but there was a perpetual

movement

from class to class.

The

peasant's son inherited the holding.

The

day labourer saved andrentedabit of land.

The

peasantwithout land enough put in a short day's

work

for a

wage —

^{this was, and is, especially}

common

in the vine lands of the south

—

^{and tended his}

own

patch in the evenings. There were of course everjrwhere

some

landless individuals, and here and there local conditions resembling those of nineteenth century England. But the real rurallabouringclass,theproletariat, the

"wage

slaves" of Marxianeconomics, did notexist.

And

thepartialindustrialising and commercialising of agriculture, in the later nineteenth century,hadnotproduced such aclass,in spite ofassertions to the contrary. For the average unit of agriculture, the agri- cultural "business," remains as small as ever it was, and its

typical manager is still the working peasant or the very small Nfarmer.

Besides the groups of cultivating proprietors, farmers, and metayers, classed aschefs d'exploitationinthe 1882-92 statistics, there are threegroupsof "auxiliaryandsalariedpersons."

They

are rdgisseurs, stewards or baiUffs

who manage

properties for large owners, day labourers (joumaliers) and farm servants (domestiques).

The

farm servant is fed and housed

by

his